Tuesday 24 July 2007

Leave only footprints

The Eastern Cape’s first survival school gets up and running

Shane Engelbrecht cuts a shy and unassuming figure but when he talks the man seems to grow in stature. He talks with passion and intensity about the environment and humankind’s increasingly problematic relationship with it. The challenge for him, a deeply personal one and now a career choice, is how we understand and relate to the environment.

Engelbrecht is founder and coordinator of The Eastern Wilderness School, the first and only of its kind in the Eastern Cape, based on Fairview Game Reserve just outside of Grahamstown on the R67 towards Port Alfred. The school offers courses on the basic skills of wilderness living and outdoor survival.

Born in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Engelbrecht has lived all over South Africa as well as having travelled inside of Southern Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the United Kingdom. He has returned to the Eastern Cape, now home, hence the name of the school.


The cultures of indigenous people have always interested Engelbrecht, the way that they live in and with the environment and the social harmony that results. This interest was given new fuel after he studied a BA at Rhodes University with majors in anthropology and sociology.

As he talks one can hear that the fascination is deep, complimented by a learned understanding of the peoples and ideas he talks about. The Khoisan and Ovahimba (Namibia) peoples in particular are a source of inspiration because of their nomadic, low impact lifestyles. “The whole idea of living in harmony with nature interested me, taking what you need and nothing more,” explains Engelbrecht.

The importance of proper use of the environment first hit home during a camping trip in Namibia. “We made a bonfire at night,” he says, “not for warmth or cooking but because we could. The next day we saw an old Himba man with a small fire and I realised we burnt what he uses in a week”.

The biggest problem in the western world, he says, is how we have moved away from a holistic consciousness, from seeing ourselves as part of nature, to one where it needs to be conquered and dominated. This situation is likely the largest contributing factor to the global environmental crisis that humanity now finds itself in. To counter this, says Engelbrecht, “our main push is to rekindle a love of the outdoors. The best survival skill (of indigenous people) is to work with nature”.

“The long term plan is to take different people out of the city environment, put them in the wilderness and give them an alternative view of nature,” he says.



The philosophy driving the school is one that seeks to bring people back to nature in a way that they are not starry-eyed tourists giving them, instead, a grounding in the ways of surviving in the natural world.

We must remember, he argues, that “in each of us are certain instincts but they dormant, in the current context of global scarce resources, these things are important. We teach a holistic way of thinking about nature and survival. If you do one thing it feeds into another.”

Courses cover things such as survival psychology, knives, water, food, fire, shelter, navigation, creepy crawlies, as well as rescue procedure and survival kit. Eventually the school will cater for various levels ranging from basic weekend courses, highly specialised training such as military and pilot/air crew survival, and personalised programs, designed to suit the needs and natural environment of the students. So far Engelbrecht has run courses for students and some local schools.

The school is also linked to Hobbiton-on-Hogsback, an organisation that does social outreach programme aimed at underprivileged children and schools with a focus on outdoor activities and team building. Through providing complimentary activities groups leave with a more rounded experience.

One gets the sense that this process of learning about going back to nature has been a spiritual journey leading to the establishment of the school. “The ironic thing,” says Engelbrecht, “is that most of these (survival) skills have been forgotten here (in Southern Africa) and I have had to travel very far to learn them. I am interested in recovering these lost skills”.




Smiling, he recalls “the first time I got fire with a fire stick it took me four hours. When I saw flame I felt what the first human must have felt, but here I am in the twenty-first century. I thought to myself, this is it! If I can share this knowledge with someone else and they can have that feeling, great.”





Partner in the process of building the school is Grahamstown local Siyabonga Mthathi (21). Mthathi is co-facilitator and responsible for teaching students about Xhosa culture. With time Engelbrecht hopes to train Mthathi up to a level where he will facilitate for Xhosa-speaking groups. The school’s aim is not to be exclusive but to educate people of all ages, backgrounds and racial groups as environmental issues are a universal human concern.

Fairview owner, Len Kruiskamp, says that the presence of the school at Fairview would add depth to the farm’s existing offerings and provide a valuable service to the entire Grahamstown community. “From my point of view it is a facility that Grahamstown needs and with the Hobbiton connections it gives added opportunity to underprivileged kids which they don’t have at the moment.”

In parting Engelbrecht quotes from a book on “participating in nature”. His challenge is simple, “the more you know the less you need to take with you. Then you go out and melt into nature”.


Facebook:                                                      Eastern Wilderness

Video:                                                            FIRE IN A FLASH - hand drill friction fire method 

Advanced Survival Course 24 August 2011:       Navigation
                                                                      Knives 
                                                                      Flint and Steel fire making 
                                                                      Shelter Building 

Thursday 5 July 2007

Trouble in the rite


“Are we achieving anything by looking at manhood in the way we are doing?”


This is the question posed by Zweliyanyikima Vena an inkhankatha (traditional nurse) who practices in and around Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Vena is a small man but great in presence, stature and in the way he wears his ubudoda (manhood). As a Xhosa, Vena’s manhood is one of the most important things to him personally and his identity as a Xhosa. He is only a man today because he under went the traditional rite of passage from ubukwenkwe (boyhood) to ubudoda inside of an initiation process involving circumcision. For this Xhosa this is the only way a boy will ever be a man. Further, to become a man is to leave behind the carefree life of a boy and take on the responsibilities of adulthood. A boy may not marry, inherit from his father, attend council meetings or be heard, and more generally is prohibited form entering into full community membership.


As indoda makhulu (elderly man) Vena’s duty to his community is to safeguard it and serve as a model of manly behaviour to its men and boys. As a traditional nurse his duties are greatly extended. Every of June and December thousands of Xhosa boys “go to the bush” to being their transitions to manhood and so being a new life as men. Vena’s role in the process is as warden of the seclusion lodges where the process takes place. His job is to ensure the abakhwetha (initiates) are safe throughout, that the healing process is done properly and monitored, that discipline is kept and, most importantly, he is the first source of the many teachings and instruction in manhood.


“It is important for boys to know who they are.”


This is where the moral, spiritual and cultural teachings of the ritual are key. They are the means by which the importance of positive masculine behaviour is imparted. It is the way an age set (group ) is formed and cemented through collective experience and a cultural means of ensuring both group solidarity and purpose. Those circumcised together will think of each other as peers, and more importantly brothers. They will support each other and also discipline those who are seen to cast a shadow on the practice of manhood. In this way a man will have a support group all his live, one that will help him fashion his manhood and he, in return, theirs. A function of this collectivity is to create harmony amongst men and so reduce conflict. This is in stark contrast to many western settings where manhood and masculinity are driven by competition and struggle.


The experience of the ritual is physical and serves as a reminder of significance of the process at work as well as being proof that one has actually undertaken the journey. However, the physical process is not the focus of the ritual, it is the means by which the psychological or moral aspect is meant to take effect. The training toward full community membership happens from birth and this socialisation continues well into adulthood with the transition to manhood a key step in the process.


“We groom the child into the traditional ethic and the child has to grow up being proud of his clan, his family and in himself as a black man.”


While the rites of passage are meant to change an individual’s status, role and responsibilities in his community it is not the end of the process. Manhood is conferred but it is not immediate, instead it is a life long process of self development. Vena explains the process in its evolutionary stages:


Ikywala – The grooming phase – Newly graduated “raw” man


Iyafana – Young man – He looks like a man


Indodana – He is beginning to build (mental) muscles, to behave responsibly


Iqina – He has gained strength (in his manhood)


Ubudoda – He can now sit and discuss with the elders, be delegated tasks without supervision


Indoda makhulu – He must now look after his community


However, the question asked by Vena in the beginning is a sign that things are not well. The ritual is increasingly being associated with death as each season brings with it more deaths. Added to this is the seeming social breakdown in South Africa which has brought with it a climate of violence perpetrated by men against women, children and the weak (rape, domestic violence, murder), behaviour that is deplorable in traditional thinking.


“Today the men in our community are so westernised. They don’t realise they have a culture of their own that has to be held.”


“For lack of education, the young man is found wanting in many ways.”


The lack of connection to ones roots has had a destabilising effect as have the widespread socio-economic conditions (historically, politically, and socially rooted) that have created an environment in which some men have become absent fathers, abusive husbands/fathers/brothers/uncles, robbers, murderers and rapists. The drive towards individualism – as a result of both the breakdown of culture and community as well as global pressures toward individualistic behaviour and self-motivated consumption – has damaged cultural institutions such as rites of passage and have left men outside of structures that inform their identity as men.


“From 1976 the community morals have changed and we need to put our house in order”.


Vena concludes saying that all is not well. Men today are not as they were before. Something is missing. In the past unruly boys were changed in the bush and yet now it seems as if those same boys are coming back men while not fully leaving boyhood behind. Speaking rhetorically, he asks of a boy about to undergo his passage today:


“Is his manhood going to be meaningful? Is he going to define his manhood properly?”